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NEW YORK - OCTOBER 14: People shop in a Apple store on October 14, 2010 in New York, New York. Riding on the success of the iPhone and iPad, shares of Apple Inc. climbed $1.60 to close at $300.14 on October 13. It is the first time in the tech company's history that the stock has topped $300. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

If you visit an Apple store once at the beginning of a week and again at the end of the week, chances are you’re seeing a completely new set of inventory. Impressively, the company turns over its inventory every five days, according to a new study.

Analyst firm Gartner, in its 2012 Supply Chain Top 25 study, says that Apple restocks its shelves 74 times a year, beating out companies like Amazon, Dell, and P&G for most inventory turned. Amazon, which is famous for its quick shipping times, only turns its inventory 10 times a year. Dell has a slightly higher refresh rate at 35 times a year, and P&G falls at five times a year.

Apple’s numbers are actually closer to fast food chain McDonalds, which turns its inventory 142 times a year. Apple turns its inventory like a food retailers, whose products actually have an expiration and have to be swept clean by law. In Apple’s second quarter earnings call of 2012, the company announced that it had sold 35.1 million units of its iPhones, which was 88 percent higher than the year before. It also sold 11.8 million iPads, 151 percent higher than last year, and 4 million Macs, seven percent higher than last year.

Of course, the phenomenal popularity of Apple products helps keep inventory turns high. Fast turns helps with a variety of supply chain metrics--obsolescence is minimized as products are not overstocked at the retail level, inventory holding costs are lowered as fewer, expensive products reside in the channels, and pricing power maintained as gluts are minimized.

Other companies can learn a lot from Apple and its supply chain strategies. It helps that Apple has a top down view of strategy, with senior executives very supportive of efforts by supply chain professionals to run lean operations, instead of stuffing the channels using overblown sales forecasts.

A screenshot of Navit posted on http://wiki.navit-project.org/ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to Xconomy, Waze, the Israel-based social navigation and traffic service, announced that it now has over 20 million users. That’s quite a milestone for any startup, but what makes this number so impressive is that the company also announced that it added half of its users in the last six month and continues to grow quickly. Just in the last month, the company said, it added 1.8 million new users to its community. All of these users, said Waze, have used the app to drive over 3.2 billion miles so far. Waze has received funding from a number of prominent Silicon Valley funds (including Kleiner Perkins) and Horizons Ventures Hong Kong. In total, Waze has raised about $67 million since its launch in 2008. The company is clearly on a roll right now and given that it depends on its users to collect traffic data, having more users is obviously a boon for anybody who uses the service (though, as usual, Waze is happy to report the download numbers, but that obviously doesn’t mean it actually has 20 million active users). Just two weeks ago, Waze announced a number of new features, including the ability to see real-time fuel prices in the company’s mobile apps. Earlier this year, Waze also added a hands-free feature to its iPhone app that allows users to just wave their hand in front of their iPhones to start Waze’s voice-recognition mode to report traffic conditions while driving. The company, unlike most of its competitors, also makes the source code of its apps available to anybody who would like to take a look and modify it. Still, with the arrival of built-in turn-by-turn directions in iOS6 (and with Google already offering this feature on Android), it’s hard to predict the future of Waze. The company apparently provides some data to Apple and chances are Apple is paying a fee for this data, but it remains to be seen how quickly the company can continue to grow after Apple releases iOS 6 with its built-in turn-by-turn navigation.

The need for real-time traffic data will continue to grow as congestion gets worse worldwide, but who will be the winner? In the consumer space, Waze has a chance, but needs to be more than a one-trick pony.

Will publisher's relinguish control of book supply chains to Amazon? Of course, the technology already exists (and Amazon owns it) to print books at an Amazon fulfillment facility and send them off to customers, with the same delivery times as exist today. Using an industrial strength printer and a digital book file, the task is easy.

But major publishers are not even agreeing to let Amazon have digital files of their back list books, fearing that this would be the proverbial "camel's nose under the tent" and that best sellers would be next on the list for on-demand printing. From Amazon's perspective, they would like to free up hundreds of thousands of feet of warehouse space now dedicated to books in their fulfillment centers, not to mention the labor involved in picking these books.

The principal reason? It's all about money. With best sellers going for perhaps $30 plus (and hefty profit margins), why split only $10 or so in Kindle revenue with both Amazon and the author. And Amazon already owns a print on demand provider, BookSurge (now called Create Space--clever name, huh, when you think about those books taking up warehouse space?). CreateSpace offers small publishers on-demand printing options and the results are as good as using a regular press for paperbacks.

From the publisher's point of view, they have spent the last 100 years building up complex supply chains, involving printers, warehouses, distributors and retailers to reach consumers. Often, these supply chains are now way too expensive to justify, given availability of today's on-demand technology and the huge amount of unsold books that must make their way back through reverse logistics. Publishers offer authors a wide range of money making services attached to this supply chain, including editing, printing, storage and distribution--all used to justify them keeping the lion's share of high wholesale prices. Amazon's on-demand printing threat eliminates many of the "value-add" and expensive services.

Other start ups, such as On Demand Books, offer similar services, but with only a few bookstores using the technology ($100K per machine) and only a few publishers making any part of its catalog available--generally only books out of copyright.

Many smaller publishers, especially of frequently updated technical manuals, have seen the light and begun using on-demand technology exclusively. But it will be many years before the major publishers are willing to chuck out their old-fashioned supply chains and embrace the new technology.

Well, I admit it, this is not really a supply chain company, but Freight Farms does solve a problem--recycling those old ocean containers who blot our landscape into urban vegetable farms. Take one well used 40 foot container, add plastic-and-foam growing channels on the walls, an irrigation system on the ceiling and LED grow lights and voila! you have an urban greenhouse for year around crops of lettuce, tomatoes and peppers.

The founders, Brad McNamara and Jon Friedman, hope to sell the produce to local restaurants and the fully equipped containers to other restaurants who want their own food production capability. Some restaurants already use their rooftops to grow food and many others have their own gardens, like Arrows in Ogunquit, Maine. Freight Farms is one of several start ups (see also Lufa Farms and Higher Ground Farms) looking to bring food production to the heart of the city by leasing space to grow food on a commercial scale, selling to distributors, restaurants and consumers. Cheap natural gas is also leading to a boom in year around greenhouse operations, such as Backyard Farms in Madison, Maine, who focus on serving regional markets twelve months a year.

Such local food production options do have significant supply chain benefits for consumers--lower transportation costs, less pollution, and less waste since spoilage can run up to 60% in long haul supply lines. Ideal locations might be bakeries, who produce a lot of waste heat in the baking process that can keep the containers/greenhouse warm in the winter.

Freight Farms has raised over $30,000 on kickstarter from 98 "investors", using the money to build the proof of concept container. They plan to sell a basic container, fully equipped to grow food, at around $40,000, with Freight Farms providing a remote monitoring service and growing advice from gardening experts.

Of course, addressing local regulations, satisfying NIMBY neighbors and finding strong rooftops are all issues that must be overcome before one can install a rooftop or parking lot container farm. Trish Karter, founder of Dancing Bear Baking Company and now CEO of LightEffect Farms has spent many months looking for a site, only to have the neighbors veto the farm container on the roof of a car wash.

But I love the idea of locally grown food. New Englanders relish summer because that is the only time we can eat tomatoes that were not "strip mined in Texas". Local, year around farming is a trend that will continue. Whether anyone will make any money doing it is another question.